![]() Thus, when faced with emotional situations, people with autism do not use their prefrontal cortices to regulate emotions to the same extent as people without autism. But their brain scans suggest that people with autism did not use their prefrontal cortex to the same extent as people without autism. They changed their emotional responses to the picture. The pupil data suggested that participants worked hard to fulfill the requirements of the study. This limited activation of the prefrontal cortex, not surprisingly, resulted in less modulation of the limbic regions." ![]() ![]() "It was as though the brain region that's needed to work hard to regulate emotional responses couldn't activate to the same degree as it did in people without autism. "The prefrontal cortex did not come online to the same extent," Dichter said. The brain scans of people with autism were different. This confirmed what other research had shown. They found that in the control group, the prefrontal cortex worked hard to modulate the emotional response that originated in the limbic system - an evolutionarily old part of the brain associated with basic emotions and needs. ![]() These methods, along with self-reporting from participants, created checks and balances that ensured the accuracy of the data they collected from brain scans. It's known that pupils dilate when people exert cognitive effort, such as trying to recall someone's name or trying to change an emotional response to situation. The researchers also used eye-tracking methods to ensure all participants continuously viewed the picture and to measure at high resolution the size of each participant's pupils. Partway through viewing each picture, participants were asked to generate positive thoughts about the picture, or generate negative thoughts, or leave their emotional response unchanged. Because it is well documented that people with autism often have trouble regulating their emotions, Dichter's team spent 45 minutes with each participant to teach them how to change their perception of an emotional stimulus before they entered the MRI scanner.ĭuring the study, while in the fMRI scanner, each participant viewed a series of pictures of human faces with no expression. The institute has a registry of more than 5,000 families with members who have been diagnosed with autism.įor this study, Dichter's team recruited 15 controls and 15 young adults, age 18 to 30, with autism. The Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities, directed by Joseph Piven, MD, is the umbrella program for autism research at UNC, which ranked second worldwide for the number of autism-related scientific papers published in 2012, the last time an intergovernmental agency issued the ranking. ![]() "We've known for a while that we need to pay attention to emotion regulation in people with autism," Dichter said, "but we think these data suggest a neural basis for these problems and add credence to their ubiquity as core features of the disorder." There are only two FDA-approved medications to treat autism and neither treats core symptoms they treat high rates of irritability and aggression. "Children with autism often lack the ability to cope with difficult emotional situations that result in meltdowns and tantrums." "Any parent of a child with autism knows that these symptoms can be pervasive," added Dichter, who is a member of the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities. Gabriel Dichter, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and psychology and senior author of the paper, said, "This research adds to the growing awareness that although autism is diagnosed on the basis of social impairment and repetitive behaviors, the importance of emotion regulation and all the behaviors that come with it - depression, tantrums, meltdowns, irritability - are very real and should be a focus of clinical services." The symptoms do not seem to be merely associated with or a result of the core autism symptoms, which include repetitive behaviors, verbal and non-verbal communications problems, difficulties with social interactions, and other cognitive issues. The discovery shows that "emotion regulation" symptoms have a biological explanation that can be visualized using fMRI. The findings, published online today in the Journal of Autism Developmental Disorder as part of a special issue on emotion regulation, suggest that improving prefrontal cortex activity could directly help autistic people regulate their emotions and improve serious symptoms associated with the disorder, which affects millions of people in the United States. ![]()
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